Well, the thing is it’s being a “re-read” of Volume 1.
Maybe I can focus on reading other stuff while on other times I might not be able to sit and concentrate in reading, just listen to the audiobook.
Also this will be the first time I’ll go into the audiobook before the anime, so it will be weird probably hearing the anime later 
Hours if you recall.
do you do audiobooks? If yes, I highly, highly recommend switching to audiobook for this series or hybrid-reading. 
So I don’t track hours at all. All I can go by is my kindle indicating how long it thinks it would take me to finish a volume from the beginning. For the four volumes I most recently read, it says 19-24 hours. I have absolutely no idea if that’s accurate though.
Ah, I thought you meant you would read/listen to volume 2…
Out of curiosity, why do you want to re-read volume 1? Do you feel you forgot parts of it?
I’m doing that with the Slime novels, I think having two series as read-along would thin the learning, as they are kinda different skills that are being applied.
For 本好き I wanted to go with my own reading skill without external aid. It’s also giving me a reality check with the kanji, not so much the vocabulary or the grammar.
Thanks! Yeah an estimate was enough.
More than forgetting, I think I probably missed details.
Oh, in terms of hours, 2~3 days mean 10~15 hours. I was really spending all my free time reading the books at the time. 4 days would mean ~20h, so I’m actually in the same time range as you both.
My hours are a bit harder to translate from days. When I’m reading 本好き, I read pages here and there during breaks at work, plus some before work, and a lot after work. But since it’s not consistent how much spare time I have during work hours and also I do other things besides read the book after work, it’s hard to directly keep track of hours. (When I’m reading 本好き I tend to do very little else in Japanese, but not nothing else. Also, I still need breaks, so I’ll watch non-Japanese TV or YouTube as well.) I’m not even sure how I’d actually track hours to be honest. (Hence why I’m not even sure about the accuracy of the kindle numbers.)
I use a stopwatch.
If I’m in the desktop, I use software based one. If I’m reading away from the computer, I use a wristwatch stopwatch function. Worst case is I don’t have a watch at hand, but I just look around a clock and record start time and end time.
Since I track all my tasks related to Japanese learning, this is just an extension to that.
The main goals are to be able to do a minimum at least, and also see if I’m falling behind. For example I see days where my concentration just won’t pick up, so it might signify I need a break or move to another task.
The data collection also helps me understand how I’m progressing and what areas I’m not giving enough attention.
To give a practical example:
世にも奇妙な商品カタログ 1 took me 9 hours at 0.4pgs/min, if I look at a more recent volume of that same series 世にも奇妙な商品カタログ 7 took me 7 hours at 0.55pgs/min.
As shallow as it might sound, I also use this as another motivator to keep pushing.
I find thinking in characters easier than in pages and generally 10k characters per hour is considered a decent speed for a learner. (Beginners often start out with 2k per hour… 
) Japanese natives are in the 30-40k range.
The 5th volume has 210k characters (and 350 pages). So, around 20 hours for 1 volume for a non-native seems pretty much on the average side. 
I just really don’t want to spend 20 hours with 1 book. I am used to reading ~100 pages per hour in English (non-native), which is why audiobooks are the way to go for me. The slime series is also on my TBR. 
I do think comparing reading time across different people is pretty hard, because how you read influences it quite a lot (Do you read digitally? Do you look up every word? Do you try to understand every sentence? Do you mine cards while reading?), but I’d also think 19h isn’t slow for the first volume. I probably took longer than that, even with the audiobook to help me out 
Apparently I spent 14 days on volume 1, while volume 7 took me 2. It really gets easier c:
My reading speed varies vastly depending on how patient I am about checking words I don’t know! Sentence length and complexity is also a factor, for instance I would be quicker reading a Keigo Higashino compared to other books of a similar length as he has a very straightforward style. So like you said, it is hard to compare 
I finished it today and maybe I should have read it drunk. In the end, the plot was underwhelming and full of holes (and gratuitous gore/body horror towards the end for good measure).
That’s too bad, since the writing style of the author is pretty nice in itself.
Yeeah - I liked it quite a lot, but I entirely understand why someone wouldn’t. Something about the slow meandering relationship-focused plot, interspersed with body horror and occasional violence, weird subplots that pop up and vanish, and even the nonsensical ending … felt pretty fresh and compelling to me. Maybe I sign I read too much rubbish?
Right, the part where organ transplants somehow gives マドカ the memories of C4 kinda lost me. I did love how it was hand waved away by having 征威 going “but it’s impossible?!? Well, I guess it happened anyway” though 
Heh, I love reading rubbish myself. That one didn’t work for me, but hopefully the next one will.
So after putting it to the polls, I am reading わたし、定時で帰ります。 | L36 (learnnatively.com). I am intrigued as it got a lot of love on a few Japanese blogs I follow! Having read about ten pages, the style seems pretty clear, so level 36 feels surprisingly high to me, it feels more like a 30-32. However, perhaps that’s due to vocabulary? Or maybe it will ramp up later has anyone on here read it?
It seems like it has few users and also the gradings are kinda old, so it might not be very accurate to begin with.
But as more people read it, it should get better.
Still on my quest to finish my 積読 pile (a never ending quest, since I basically getting stuff faster than I read them, but I digress), I read とんでもスキルで異世界放浪メシ1 豚の生姜焼き×伝説の魔獣 | L28 today.
On the plus side, it was ridiculously fast to read. On the minus side, that was because the writing was outrageously bad. Every other page, the main character is cooking something, which results in all other characters to say something like 美味しそう in their speech pattern, then eating it, resulting in a full page of 美味い/うめー/美味しい/お代わり. Guys, that was instant miso soup, it’s not even that good. (He cooks other things as well, obviously, but the fact they still had that reaction for that one or kombini chocolate is just too much for me).
Also, the main character, despite being virtually invulnerable, is afraid of everything, to the bewilderment of those with him, which leads to near copy/paste situations: him saying they shouldn’t go/do that and another character saying “but nothing bad can happen” → “speak for yourself” → “no but seriously” → “I don’t wanna” → is still forced to go/do the thing anyway.
Like, why does that need to happen every time?
The good thing is that I got that book for free through a promotion on Booklive. The bad thing is that that’s exactly how much it was worth for me. I considered dropping it, but then realized I was already at the 55% mark sooo I might as well finish it. Sunk cost fallacy, you know.
I feel like there are quite a few lazy Isekai train riders, and this might be one of them for what you are saying.
I had a similar experience with 現実主義勇者の王国再建記. Note that I read it in English, but at some point I just had to stop, and I gave it a very fair time (I think I reached vol 7 or so?). Some parts would be such a drag of nothingness that you could feel how the author was struggling to fill the pages.
If you are going to be hilariously bad, at least become self-aware like ありふれた職業で世界最強, この勇者が俺TUEEEくせに慎重すぎる, or 陰の実力者になりたくて. At least you can have a laugh while reading it.
Thank you for your service! o7 At least you got to see numbers go up, I suppose?
